Jubilee Party has already lost the propaganda war to Cord

It was astonishing the hear both the President and his deputy argue that come next year, voters will see past the propaganda being waged by the Opposition and recognise the importance of what the government has done for this country in the past four years.

The underlying assumption in the message is that during an election year, voters are rational beings.

Unfortunately for any incumbent government, this has never been the case in the past, and won’t happen in the future.

Kenyans, unless they are direct beneficiaries of any government benevolence, do not vote on the basis of development projects launched; they are more swayed by the emotions of the present and quite often, those emotions are the product of propaganda.

One does not need to be a political scientist to acknowledge this basic truth; propaganda is a very potent weapon in any election and dismissing it offhand is akin to committing political suicide.

The fact is, the Jubilee administration has been losing the propaganda war to the Opposition for some time now, and only deliberately aggressive action on its part will allow it to regain the initiative.

This is not what has been happening this year.

What Kenyans are being persuaded by the masters of the sound-bite is that the country is being run by a small clique that belongs in jail.

This is not, and cannot be, the truth. The problem is that of perception.

When a government is buffeted by allegations of theft of public funds on a grand scale week upon week, then whatever its accomplishments, too many people will believe the salacious allegations though many of the claims may not be backed by unassailable facts.

In any case, by the time the truth comes out, it does not really matter; the damage has already been done.

This, of course, is an occupational hazard for governments the world over and nothing much can be done about it, for it is easier to make an accusation which you cannot prove than to provide facts and figures to disprove the allegation, however spurious.

REDEMPTION
The problems come when the rejoinders by the government come out as ineffectual, and herein is the nub of the matter; it is not just Opposition supporters who are happy with the discomfort its leaders are causing the government right now.

Jubilee supporters are becoming increasingly confused.

We are here talking about six million souls who voted for the then Jubilee Alliance but have now lost their voice.

Hasn’t anyone noticed that the most ardent of Jubilee supporters, especially its most vocal MPs, are conspicuously quiet these days?

Does Jubilee no longer have strategic thinkers and advisers any more or they have all trained their eyes on re-election and forgotten that this is the time to regain the trust of its core supporters who are starting to believe they are being tarred with the same brush as the congenitally corrupt?

When you see someone stonewalling a whole committee of Parliament by refusing to answer direct questions even when her defence does not make sense, when you listen to a person who did not have a cent to her name just the other day admitting freely that she lent a bank driver Sh60 million, when you hear a highly experienced Principal Secretary admit that he appended his signature to documents in which he had no hand in formulating, then to retain your sanity, you have to suspend disbelief.

And here we are not even talking of the murky details that are emerging over the alleged theft of Sh5.2 billion from the ministry of Health, and which are likely to occupy us for the next few weeks until another graft dossier is “leaked”.

If Jubilee truly does not wish to be whitewashed by the Opposition next August, it has to do a lot more to clean up its act.

One of the ways in which it can redeem itself is by picking office-bearers in a fair manner.

It is too early to comment on the sagacity or lack thereof of the method used to choose the people who will steer the party before the elections, but one thing is clear; unless Jubilee comes up with a masterplan that will put the Opposition on the defensive, it may not have enough time to counter the narrative of corruption which seems to be giving a head-start to Cord.

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